


Ādfȳr

by TexasDreamer01



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cannibalism, Gen, Great Wandering, Hobbit Culture, Peri-Canon, Survival Horror, Terrifying Tolkien, Terrifying Tolkien Week, ttwprompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:25:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4511301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TexasDreamer01/pseuds/TexasDreamer01
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes time until Ori plucks up the courage to ask Bilbo about their first bout of trouble during the Quest - for official records, of course, that's the reason he'll give if pushed. The answer given, however, isn't quite what he was expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ādfȳr

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to write something like this for a while, because how Bilbo handles the Trolls until Gandalf arrives has always piqued my interest, and the Terrifying Tolkien Week event going on over at Tumblr was an excellent opportunity (more information [here](http://acornshield.co.vu/post/125550100095/official-tag-terrifying-tolkien-attention)) to delve further into the topic and focus on the grittier aspects of the idea.
> 
> Elaboration to the headcanons presented [here](http://texasdreamer01.tumblr.com/post/126327412025/could-you-write-more-onexpand-on-the-cannibal), and reblog link [here](http://texasdreamer01.tumblr.com/post/125986902295/%C4%81df%C8%B3r).

It wasn't until they were well into the Quest that the topic was broached. Ori had plucked up the courage – or rather, was coaxed into it – to settle beside their burglar one lunch, moleskin notebook and engraved metal pen fiddled with in hand.

“Master Baggins?”

He gave an inquisitive hum in response, chewing on a bite of cram with a slim blond brow raised. The dwarf waited patiently, glancing at the members of the Company studiously not watching them whenever the other's eyes flicked away from him. Bilbo appeared not to notice, busy looking at the round of dried biscuit in his hand with a contemplative look – it didn't help the trickle of nervous sweat at the nape of the scribe's neck – before fixing Ori with a polite smile, “Something I could help you with?”

Giving a short nod (and wincing internally at how stilted it was, inciting a concerned look from the hobbit), he muddled through the question that had been carefully prepared, “About the trolls...” Bilbo nodded encouragingly, taking the chance to nibble at the cram as he struggled to recall the exact phrasing. It wouldn't do to insult the hobbit, or incite another bout of sharp-tongued wit as had been demonstrated shortly after they departed from Bree so long ago. Over the other's shoulder, Kíli was rapidly signing the words, slip of worn paper just barely visible on the prince's lap. He took a steadying breath, trying to bluff his insecurity away, “I was curious as to how you came up with your speech to them. It was very impressive, especially with the way you managed to get their attention. If I may ask, Master Baggins... why about food?”

Plying him with compliments was apparently a wise route, for the burglar fairly well preened under the positive attention, lips quirking in a combination of pride and amusement (likely at how Ori blundered through it, he was sure) as he plucked pieces of erstwhile crumbs that had fallen onto his lap in ostensible demureness. Letting the cram rest on a thigh, Bilbo's face formed a moue of concentration, a few blithe moments passing that Ori swore ratcheted up his heartbeat before the man gave a shrug and shot him a wry look, “I'm a hobbit. We tend to think in food; though I suppose it was a terribly risky plan, wasn't it? Reminding trolls that there was something to eat right in front of them.”

Shoulders falling from their tense pose, the dwarf nodded weakly and murmured an agreement. Listening to the rustling of the breeze as it filtered through the tall grasses in the noonday sun, they sat in – at least for Bilbo, if not for him – companionable silence. The other had picked his meal up again, obviously enjoying the sustenance but still devouring it at what was an alarming rate to Ori, the conversation not letting the uneasiness be lulled away and making him wary of the typical speed at which the hobbit ate. Just as the scribe had decided he was done tracing a dirtied nail over the engravings of his calligraphy pen (a gift, from both brothers when he gained his apprenticeship) for the umpteenth time in what he hoped looked like genuine absorption of detail, Bilbo's firm voice forced him back down onto the tamped grass, “Ori. What were you really wanting to ask? There was time enough between then and now to compliment me on the trolls, and I have since learned dwarves do not withhold such things for very long.”

He gulped. _Dammit_. The demand hadn't travelled very far to the earshot of the rest of the Company, but the reactions had rippled far enough that even those farthest away were starting to pay attention. Not daring to meet Bilbo's gaze – somewhat of an awkward feat, given how the burglar was the shortest of the entire troupe – he clutched the book and pen to his chest in a facsimile of a shield. Little good it would do him, if the gossip kept strictly to Khuzdul ended up being correct and the hobbit's temper was going to flare. Ori mumbled a reply into his coat, restraining a flinch at the unimpressed look the action garnered him. 

The quiet sigh was a cue for him to repeat himself at a more audible volume, meek as it was, “Do hobbits eat people, Master Baggins, sir?”

Bilbo's response to that was to pick up his cram and bite off a sizable portion, brow raised as he gave the lot of them a bland look. _In for a penny, in for a pound_ , Ori thought miserably, wishing he was unobtrusive enough at the moment to pull his hood over his eyes – he knew their burglar wasn't a fool, and had caught on immediately that he was just the most convenient mouthpiece for the thoughts of all the dwarves. Being both one of the youngest members and one of the few who meshed well with the hobbit's interests didn't usually make him want to hide behind his eldest brother (which wasn't often at all, considering how much effort he put into proving his aptitude during the Quest). Waiting for Bilbo to finish off the piece of hardtack – and hoping desperately that the tacit torture wouldn't be prolonged with another patient bite – the scribe chewed his lip nervously.

“Well, now,” the hobbit began, tone flat enough to make Ori's fingers curl around his notebook, and loud enough to make more than one ear cock in their direction, “I can guarantee you that no hobbit of the Shire eats a single person.”

There was something about that statement that made a niggling, cold ball of unease settle in the dwarf's stomach. A furtive glance at those nonchalantly eavesdropping showed varying degrees of the same. Kíli had dropped his hands into his lap, fingers limply grasping the annotated speech, face pale enough that the sparse beard was a sharp contrast even in the broad daylight. Even Gandalf, who had rejoined them after his own sedate flight from Rivendell, was peering at them, much as Ori doubted it was with the same level of concern as the others, blast him. Bilbo's eyes twinkled (doing absolutely nothing to help the overall mood; he could spy Nori from the corner of his eye trace a few fingers suspiciously over where a throwing knife was hidden in the folds of his coat), tone going from flat to dry in a subtle nuance that he _still_ didn't think was very reassuring, “Besides, everybody knows dwarves have worms in their tubes. Makes for terrible meals, that; you're all safe enough from a ravenous gentlehobbit.”

Without further ado, the burglar resumed his meagre meal, showing a contentment that was utterly at odds with the stirred tension of everybody else and the perpetual dry-rot taste that chased the food. A ripple of resettling echoed out from the reluctant relaxation of Ori. There were precious few moments of peace in the camp before a voice piped up, “An' how do ye know _that_ , Burglar?" 

A smattering of groans met the gruff and affronted demand. Ori couldn't deny it – the healer had a point, and he was vastly more likely to have the knowledge needed to corroborate (or deny) Bilbo's long-ago argument. Glancing at the wizard, and what did that blasted Tharkûn not have a secret on, the hobbit quite carefully set his lunch back down with a resigned sigh and leaned back. Propped up on arms stretched out behind him in a rare moment of slouching that was scarcely seen from the fastidious member of the Company, Bilbo tangled his fingers in the grass. He started slowly, haltingly, as if reaching back in his mind for a dusty and half-forgotten memory, “The Shire...” The hobbit said, voice breathy in the way that a heavy topic dragged it into, pausing to wet his lips to gather thoughts, “The Shire is not so old. Hobbits are older, certainly – Bree was settled first, did you know? We outgrew it too quickly, and needed to find more land for our families. But before that... we hobbits have been in many places.

“The Vales of Anduin,” Here he nodded, tilting his head in a gesture at the surrounding landscape. Ori noticed him cast his gaze over the hills and mountains and great swathes of flora, and wondered if that was how he would gaze upon Erebor in a few short months, “Around here, yes. We lived here for a long time, enough to settle and prosper and grow great, large families that stuffed our smials full of fauntlings. We remember this place as very peaceful, bountiful in ways that even in the Shire could be hardly imagined – the Shire had to be earned, tended and coaxed so that even a potato could grow from the neglected land.”

Bilbo nodded, eyes glazed over in a manner that the scribe had seen often enough in veterans, pursing his lips faintly, “Oh, it wasn't always fruitful. We've gotten some bad years, bad... winters. But it was safer than the Vale; the Rangers make sure Orcs couldn't creep across like they started doing here. Only once they got through,” An absent nod in Gandalf's direction, its reciprocation unacknowledged, lost as their burglar was in old memories, “Settled quickly, so not much harm done. 

“There was... a time before that, though,” Hidden to the others, barely visible to even Ori, the hobbit's hands fisted into the soil as he continued on dispassionately, “We wandered, long enough before the Great Wandering to have been mostly forgotten. A few songs survive of that time, a few tales not even told to fauntlings. Us hobbits – we did not wander like Durin's folk did, no. No, there was no home. One place, to another, harried along lest we be dragged out of our smials in the midst of our sleep. Hard years made harder, winters more chilling, less and less children born as our hunger waxed with no food in sight.”

Ori resisted the urge to crane closer to catch that quiet intake of breath, nearly a gasp, lined in pain hoarded and passed on through the generations, “So... – we found ways to eat. There were enough others snapping at our heels. What if we turned back? What if we faced them? Nothing to lose, after all, barely enough of us to make a difference. Dieing out seemed inevitable, not enough newcomers to coax us into a people, and picking your death seemed more preferable. So- so we fought. And sometimes we won. But we were hungry; we learned, learned how to fight for our food. When we made mistakes, we learned from those, too. There was nothing to lose – learn how to die, learn how to fight, learn how to live.”

The story – for that was what it was, one passed down from parent to child, and one that lasted for Ages – left a hollow echo in the rapt audience, too closely mirrored in the history of the dwarrow. Ori squirmed in his impromptu seat, grass prickling the gaps in his clothing and clinging stubbornly to his knitted gloves. Bilbo glanced down at the cram in his lap, few missing the look that spoke of hunger long-acclimated to, “Sometimes someone was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A straggler, much like us, come to test their chances at people smaller – weaker – than them.

“Hunger is a good motivator,” The hobbit's smile was sharp, accentuating a canine. Whether it was intentional or not, Ori didn't know. A pause, drifting long enough to become a tacit agreement of ending, mood shifting from its nebulous tune to something a few shades less grim as the burglar's smile fluctuated to a tone more familiar to the Company. He picked up the hardtack again, tapping it once against his mouth, “A few meals missed here and there isn't the end of the world, eh?” 

Ori breathed out a sigh, finally – _finally_ – getting up from the indent he'd made in the ground. Just as he was walking back to his original spot, he heard Bilbo throw a quip at him, “Watch those tubes, Master Ori!”

**Author's Note:**

> "While hardtack was nutritious, yet a hungry man could eat his ten in a short time and still be hungry. When they were poor and fit objects for the soldiers’ wrath, it was due to one of three conditions: first, they may have been so hard that they could not be bitten; it then required a very strong blow of the fist to break them [...]" - [The American Table: Civil War Recipe: Hardtack (1861)](http://www.americantable.org/2013/06/civil-war-recipe-hardtack-1861/)
> 
> Tumblr reblog link [here](http://texasdreamer01.tumblr.com/post/125986902295/%C4%81df%C8%B3r).


End file.
